Tag: child tax credit

Senator Joni Ernst is using Facebook to gin up support for the new tax bill. It is a one-sided picture, to say the least.

So, what does it really mean for Iowans that the tax bill is law?

Middle and low-income Iowans will see temporary ​tax cuts in the short term that are ​drastically smaller​​ than those high-income taxpayers will see — and these will be taken away or turned into tax increases by 2027 to help pay for permanent tax cuts for corporations.

Millions of people nationwide will lose health insurance coverage as elimination of the individual mandate drives up costs for all.

The wealthy will keep more millions of dollars that have never been taxed due to further exemptions in the estate tax.

The Child Tax Credit will be extended to affluent families who do not need assistance, while 86,000 children in working families in Iowa receive a token increase of $75 or less — both expansions to evaporate after 2025.

Businesses will get enormous, permanent tax breaks with no requirements to create jobs.

Some might recall a longtime radio commentator, Paul Harvey, and his “Rest of the Story” pieces. The points above are the “rest of the story” that you might not hear from backers of the latest tax giveaway in Congress. You might be OK with them and call them the “best of the story.”

Or, you might be concerned about the impact they will have on U.S. and Iowa families, on national debt and new challenges they bring to the safety net, and call them the “worst of the story.”

But they are the real story, and they should not be forgotten as the spin continues.

Despite a proposed improvement in the Child Tax Credit, the Senate tax bill doesn’t live up to proponents’ rhetoric to support families with children.

GUEST BLOGDespite Child Tax Credit change, Senate Tax Bill Doesn’t Live Up to Rhetoric in Supporting Families with Children

One of the few provisions in the proposed Senate tax bill that has bipartisan support is increasing the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which has been designed to better reflect the costs of raising children. It has been cited as a major benefit to working and middle-class families with children.

Like other provisions, however, this change is done in ways that provide almost no help to working low- and moderate-income families, while providing huge breaks for very wealthy ones. For middle-income families, the gains from a higher child tax credit are mostly offset by losses in personal exemptions, and some middle-class families would actually pay more under the proposals than under current law.

The Senate and House versions both provide information needed to calculate the taxes different tax filers would pay on their 2018 income (the year the changes go into effect) and to then compare these with the taxes they would pay under current law.

In the Senate version, the partially refundable portion of the CTC is unchanged, except that it would be indexed for inflation going forward, increasing to $1,100 in 2018. The nonrefundable credit is increased by $1,000 per child, making a maximum credit per child of $2,000 (the House version provides only an additional $600 credit, in addition to also indexing the partially refundable portion to $1,100). Both bills extend eligibility for higher income families (from a current phaseout beginning for married joint filers at $110,000 of adjusted gross income to $500,000 in the Senate version and an even higher level in the House version).

Performing the comparison of what tax filers in 2018 would experience from the CTC increase, a single mother with two children working full time and making a little above the minimum wage, $16,000 per year, gets no benefit under the House version and only $75 under the Senate version, compared with current tax law. A married couple with two children making $29,600 only receives the additional $100 per child of the refundable credit under the Senate and House versions. That the CTC provisions largely leave behind low and moderate-income families is particularly unfortunate, as these are the families that live paycheck to paycheck and could most benefit from additional support in raising their children.

Meanwhile, a married couple with two children making $300,000 per year gets the full benefit of the tax credits, $4,000 for the two children under the Senate version. This is on top of a tax cut from other changes in the tax code of at least $8,639 (which would be more if the family has extensive itemized deductions or tax-exempt income). Overall, this family is at least $12,639 better off after doing its taxes, compared with current law, $4,000 due to its new eligibility for the CTC.

For simplicity, these examples assume that all income is earned income and that the filers all take the standard deduction. If, because of buying a home, paying state and local taxes or a combination of the two, middle-income taxpayers now itemize their deductions, the increase in the standard deduction may not help at all and the loss of personal exemptions may mean they pay more taxes.

A married couple starting out with a young child and $60,000 of income, for instance, who now claims $24,000 as an itemized deduction ($18,000 in mortgage interest and property taxes, $4,000 in state and local taxes, and $2,000 in charitable contributions or other deductions) would owe $359 more in federal taxes under the Senate version. Although the family would benefit from the increase in the CTC, that would be more than offset by other changes, such as the loss of personal exemptions.

The chart below shows the specific impacts on these families of the changes in the child tax credit itself but also the changes of the overall tax changes to their individual income tax:

Tax proposals should be examined both in terms of individual provisions and in terms of their overall impact. On the former, under the Senate version the benefits of raising the Child Tax Credit are highly skewed toward the highest income tax-filers. This needs to change, by making the CTC refundable and not extending it so dramatically to the highest income families.

On the latter, the overall structure of the tax provisions largely negate the positive impact expansions of the CTC have for many middle-income families, while bestowing even more benefits on high income ones. Tinkering with the CTC without major changes in other provisions in the tax proposal cannot correct these flaws.

Rather than adding CTC provisions to a bill with other fundamental flaws, Congress should start with how it can make the CTC better reflect the cost of raising families. There exist different bipartisan proposals that would do this, but the proposal before Congress goes in the opposite direction.

Charles Bruner of Ames, a former member of the Iowa House and Senate, is director emeritus of the Child and Family Policy Center in Des Moines. CFPC, he worked with the Iowa Policy Project to form the Iowa Fiscal Partnership. Find his commentary on current issues at childequity.org. Contact him here.

If you’re looking for a real middle-class tax cut in the Senate plan, you’d better put Sherlock Holmes on the job.

If Sherlock Holmes were a United States Senator, he’d be on it: “The Case of the Missing Middle-Class Tax Cut.”

We’ve all heard about the suspicious tax cut. It’s been in all the papers, all the social media posts, anywhere the spin merchants can find a way to promote the idea that the proposed massive and permanent tax-cut giveaway to millionaires, billionaires and corporations is somehow a “middle-class tax cut.”

Puh-leeze.

No reliable information can justify the billing. Middle-class and lower-income taxpayers ultimately will — on average — pay more as a result of this legislation if it becomes law.

In Iowa, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has shown that despite some minor benefits upon enactment, the bill when fully phased in will actually result in a tax increase, on average, for the bottom 60 percent of Iowa taxpayers. Higher up the income scale, tax cuts will remain. (In the graph below, average tax changes for the bottom three quintiles of Iowa taxpayers are shown as increases, above the line.)

Someone in Iowa making $1.5 million in 2027 would get about a $4,800 benefit under the ITEP analysis — not a lot to people at that income, maybe a good payment on luxury box rent at the ballgame.

But that break for the top 1 percent would total about $68 million — a hit to services on which the money could be spent on behalf of all.

Millions of Americans — an estimated 13 million — would lose health insurance under this bill, a large share of those not giving up insurance voluntarily, but because they could no longer afford it.

Billion-dollar estates that already have $11 million exempt from tax under current law would see a doubling of that exemption, as if the first $11 million free and clear is not enough while the millions of working families struggle to get by, some at a $7.25 minimum wage that has not been raised in over eight years (in Iowa, 10 years).

A Child Tax Credit designed to help working families with the costs of raising children would be extended to families earning $500,000 a year — as if those families need the extra help, when families making $30,000 get little from the deal. By the way, that is one of the changes billed as a middle-income break, and even it would expire in 2025.

If you’re looking for a real middle-class tax cut in this legislation, you’d better put Sherlock Holmes on the job. Even then, anything you find has an expiration date, plus tax increases. And the millionaires’ cuts that remain will clamp down on resources for the essential things that government does to protect and assure opportunity for us all, and our nation’s future.

You cannot afford to do both — provide critical services and also cut resources to pay for them.

Comfort the comfortable and penalize the poor. Like the idea? If so, you’ll really like legislation scheduled for consideration today in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The House is scheduled to take up legislation that would gut improvements for low-income Americans in the Child Tax Credit (CTC), improvements passed originally in 2009, renewed in 2010 and 2012, the latter as part of the “fiscal cliff” package, where it was used as a bargaining chip to pass very expensive exemptions in the estate tax — a benefit only to America’s super-rich.

To put this in context, the House leadership bringing this new legislation to a vote will not even consider an increase in the minimum wage, now stagnant over five years nationally (6 1/2 in Iowa). The CTC, it must be noted, is one of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty tools, offsetting part of the cost of raising a child. So, as families earning at or below the minimum wage continue to lose ground, the CTC proposal will set them back even further. As noted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP):

But a single mother with two children who works full time throughout the year at the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour (which House leaders oppose raising) and earns just $14,500 would lose $1,725. Her CTC would disappear altogether.

A loss at lower incomes — yet a boost at higher incomes. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the Iowa impact of the new legislation would be:

a $285 loss on average to families with incomes below $40,000, and

a $696 benefit (tax cut) to families with income above $100,000.

Here’s how it works, according to a summary by CTJ:

The House Republican bill, H.R. 4935, would expand the CTC in three ways that do not help the working poor. First, it would index the $1,000 per-child credit amount for inflation, which would not help those who earn too little to receive the full credit. Second, it would increase the income level at which the CTC starts to phase out from $110,000 to $150,000 for married couples. Third, that $150,000 level for married couples and the existing $75,000 income level for single parents would both be indexed for inflation thereafter.

Adding insult to injury for low-income folks is that the improvements targeted for repeal came in the aforementioned “fiscal cliff” package, which made permanent big estate tax breaks for the rich, while extending improvements in the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit for only five years. CBPP’s Robert Greenstein at the time called that a “bitter pill.”

That was before these new proposals not only to cut back the CTC for lower-income families — but to expand access at higher incomes — and to adjust the high end for inflation, something lawmakers have refused to do for the minimum wage.

A bitter pill? At least. For some, all of this might seem to be an overdose.

An EITC increase would raise the threshold at which Iowa families start to owe income taxes — putting more money into the pockets of those who need it the most and encouraging them to spend that money in their local communities.

Heather Gibney

If you imagine a packed Kinnick Stadium on game day you have an idea of how many Iowans were kept out of poverty from 2009 to 2011 thanks to two refundable tax credits.

A new state-by-state analysis from the Brookings Institution finds that the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) kept 71,123 Iowans out of poverty, over half of them children.

The Governor’s Condition of the State speech Tuesday missed an opportunity to discuss the value of Iowa’s own Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to Iowa families and prospects for an expansion — something he has twice vetoed on grounds that he wanted more comprehensive tax reforms.

The Brookings analysis uses a new way of looking at poverty: the Supplemental Poverty Measure, an updated approach to the calculation of whether an Americans household is in poverty. So it’s a valuable look that we haven’t seen for state-level figures.

The EITC is designed to encourage work when low-income jobs don’t provide enough for a family to make ends meet. So, as a family earns more income, they become eligible for a larger credit; as their income approaches self-sufficiency the EITC gradually phases out.[1]

At the state level, Iowa families who are eligible for the federal EITC also qualify for the state EITC, which is set at 7 percent of the federal credit. Proposals in the past would take that higher, to 10 percent or even 20 percent. It can be an important break for lower-income working families because Iowa already taxes the income of many who don’t earn enough to pay federal income tax. Currently, a married couple with two incomes and two children who qualifies for the federal EITC doesn’t have to start paying federal income taxes until their incomes reach $45,400. That same family would have to pay Iowa income taxes when their incomes reached $22,600.[2]

The EITC is the the nation’s largest and most successful anti-poverty program, largely because it encourages and rewards working families. With Iowa’s 85th General Assembly under way, discussions about raising Iowa’s EITC above 7 percent may once again emerge after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement last year.

An EITC increase would raise the threshold at which Iowa families start to owe income taxes — putting more money into the pockets of those who need it the most and encouraging them to spend that money in their local communities.